The Flame-Throwing Helicopter That Fights Wildfires

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The Flame-Throwing Helicopter That Fights Wildfires

CAL FIRE

Unlike fighting a house fire, which involves pouring thousands of gallons of water on the problem, battling a wildfire is more akin to precision high-speed landscaping. There's no way to apply enough water to put it out entirely, so you deploy manpower to create a firebreak. Surround a fire with an area without any fuel to burn and it should, eventually, go out.

Bulldozers can cut a ten-foot wide swath down to the dirt, and 20-man "Hotshot" crews will work in concert to cut out a dirt path around a fire with hoes and chainsaws. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

That's why, according to CBS San Francisco, crews fighting the massive Rocky Fire in northern California—which has already burned 70,000 acres of land and destroyed more than 40 homes—have dusted off a somewhat more extraordinary piece of equipment: the helitorch. Yes: It's a flame-spitting helicopter.

There more mundane ways to set controlled burns, like a fusee (basically a handheld flare), flare guns (great for lighting a hillside on fire), or a driptorch filled with a mixture of gasoline and diesel that literally pours fire out of a spigot.

But all of these solutions require men on the ground, near the fire. That can be tough in rugged terrain, and requires a ton of manpower to light large areas. That's why we have the helitorch.

There are a couple different types of helitorch, but they all work largely the same way: combine aviation gasoline (which doesn't evaporate as quickly as standard gas) and a gelling agent (CAL FIRE uses something called Flash 21), light it on fire, and shoot it out of a giant contraption hanging a few dozen feet below a helicopter.

The gelling agent thickens the fuel, keeping it burning longer and improving its effectiveness as a fire starter—much like napalm. The idea is to start a continuous line of fire over hundreds or thousands of feet, even in rugged and inaccessible terrain. It also ignites the treetops, which is difficult for ground-based operations.

And, like so many things related to wildfires, it looks freaking awesome.